Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Stack Exchange RPG Update

The RPG Stack Exchange site is up and running. Not without a few issues. Some didn't like the fact that other can edit their questions and answers. Like all such things there is a learning curve among the participants and some will take to it and some will prefer the community of a forum.

I asked a couple of questions that I got good answers on. For example I was working on the city of Viridistan and was trying to figure out the immediate geography of the surrouding area.

The resulting answers helped a lot and ultimately led me to several places to look notably medieval London.

So even if you are not going to participate on a regular basis you may want to try asking a question or two for something that you are preparing or wondering about. We need more people that are knowlegable about other game systems to particpate as well. As D&D 4e questions predominate the questions.

The last bit of news is that I been one of the four moderators for the beta. So if you have any specific issue or question let me know.

Bat in the Attic Games

How to make a Sandbox

The Old School Renaissance

To me the Old School Renaissance is not about playing a particular set of rules in a particular way, the dungeon crawl. It is about going back to the roots of our hobby and seeing what we could do differently. What avenues were not explored because of the commercial and personal interests of the game designers of the time.

What are RPGs?

A game where the players play individual characters interacting with a setting with their actions adjudicated by a human referee.

Rules are an aide to help the referee adjudicate actions and to help the players interact with the setting.

Dice are used to inject uncertainty which make a tabletop RPG campaign more interesting than "Let's Pretend".

The only thing a player needs to do to roleplay a character is to act if he or she was really there in the setting in that situation.